It always feels slightly awkward to comment on issues of whitewashing, given that I fully recognize my white privilege. But, Magnussen's casting in the live-action adaptation of
Aladdin has created quite the storm of publicity for Disney...and I think it's at least worth pointing out. (
Because Disney is so entrenched in pop culture.)
Before we start: I've said before that I am
not looking forward to this adaptation. I'm not a fan of Guy Ritchie or his directorial style and, as other people have pointed out, I'm not quite sure why Ritchie seems to be going "off-book" when the other Disney live-action adaptations have essentially been the animated movie with real people. (
Cinderella was basically the 1950 film, with fleshed out characters and some modern updates to fix some of the more problematic things with gender roles;
Beauty and the Beast was essentially the same; and
The Jungle Book was actually probably closer to the original Kipling tale, while still retaining the essence of the animated film. And
The Lion King seems to be headed in a similar direction -- Jon Favreau even brought back James Earl Jones to voice Mufasa. Which...thank goodness. NO ONE ELSE could voice Mufasa.)
Also before we start: it's important to note that we still don't know who Magnussen is playing or anything about the character of "Prince Anders." At this point, I'm not sure what the justification is for inserting a white character into the story, so everything on the internet is just speculation and twitter-rage. But let's avoid another
Mulan situation where everyone jumped to conclusions, assumed the worst, and started hashtag campaigns.
Both
Teen Vogue and
the Huffington Post have articles on the controversy, and they both include Tweets from the Internet Rage Machine with how upset people are over this. (I wonder if anyone on Twitter is *defending* the casting choice...) But I find some of the Tweets to be unfair, like this one:
I get what they're going for, but...I can't take it seriously.
So I'd recommend reading
this piece from The Mary Sue. Because even though my knee-jerk reaction is to defend Disney and view this optimistically, they do make some good points:
"But it doesn’t really matter whether it was Disney, Ritchie, or some uptight studio exec who won’t acknowledge their own bias. What matters is that Aladdin was, before this news broke, going to be a film primarily starring people of color. It was going to be a film that would help the studio make a step in the right direction, and while the vast majority of the leading cast will still be sticking around, it’s disappointing to think that for whatever reason, they just couldn’t be trusted to lead a movie without a white character present."
A valid point -- that maybe Disney thinks a movie, even with Will Smith as the voice of the Genie (I won't touch the fact that Robin Williams will ALWAYS be the Genie for me), can't succeed without a white actor in it. For the record, I think it's still going to be a film "primarily starring people of color"; casting one Caucasian actor doesn't change that, just as casting Martin Freeman in Marvel's
Black Panther doesn't change it for that film.
And, given that the original source material for
Aladdin in
A Thousand and One Nights was Chinese, this claim felt a little hollow to me:
"...
couldn’t even let one movie go by without feeling compelled to re-write an old folk-tale-turned-animated-film."
(TBH, I'm not entirely sure I follow what it means: if it's criticizing the deviation from the animated film or from the original story.)
It also seems overly strong to liken Ritchie & Co. to "colonial white imperialists." I don't know why, but that really rubs me the wrong way...maybe it's, as I said above, my tendency to defend Disney or maybe it's the claim that Disney is inserting white people into a non-white history that bothers me, since this is a fictional story and Agrabah isn't a real place.
I understand the criticism, I do. And I might eat crow for this later on, but I think it's a bit premature to vilify Disney without knowing the specifics. FWIW, and this is probably a best case scenario, I hope Magnussen is playing the role of Prince Achmed from the animated film -- the prince who looks disdainfully at the people of Agrabah and who Jasmine (and Rajah) promptly rejects when he tries to impress her with all his wealth and status.
Maybe the Sultan is so desperate to see Jasmine married that he tries to arrange a marriage with her fairy-tale style -- you know, how in the fairy tales the King always says "whoever can complete task X can marry my daughter" and princes come from far and wide to try and win the princess, but in the end, it's the miller's son, or the stable boy who succeeds and rises up. (Which is, essentially, the story of
Aladdin.) So maybe Prince Anders is either invited by the Sultan or hears of the stubborn princess and travels from Scandinavia to try his luck. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, he's arrogant and entitled and elitist and looks down on our hero and the hungry children of Agrabah. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, Jasmine puts him in his place and rejects him. Maybe there's a subtle commentary on the white savior narrative and this casting/narrative will flip it.
Maybe not. Maybe I've got too much pixie dust and optimism and maybe casting Magnussen will be a huge disaster for the film.
